


Counting Up

by PredictablePisces



Category: No Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-26 07:48:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30102666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PredictablePisces/pseuds/PredictablePisces
Summary: A pair of immortals meet every century. One is handling living much better than the other.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Male Character
Kudos: 1





	Counting Up

Every hundred years had been the agreement. Every hundred years they would meet in the same spot, no matter what. The last time they had been on this spit of sand looking out at the gray-blue steel of the Atlantic, she had been shivering in her beaded dress, sand and salt ruining her stockings. He had been late to that last meeting, and the hundreds before. The only sign of aging he had were the shadows, more than he had had the century before, that hid behind his eyes. 

She knew that he had been in the war. Though a century would pass between their meetings, they still kept in contact through letters. He told her of the horrors he had seen in France and Belgium. Of the rats and mud, and blood that he saw every day. While he had been in the trenches, she had been working in a hospital in London. She thought it was a blessing to not tell him of the blood, and mud, and rats that she saw. 

The Great War had ended almost two years to the day before their last meeting. He was late. He always was. Before the time had even become a conscious thought, he had been late. Distracted by the lives that passed them by like they were stones in a river. Only he had never been eroded by humanity. The clouds of his millennia of heartbreak and pain never blocked out the vibrancy of the fleeting mortality that surrounded him. So there she had been, goosebumps crawling over her arms, shoes hooked over her fingers watching the waves crash on the silver sand as the sun set behind clouds that were the same color as the endless gray, waiting. 

Immune to the cold, he had walked through the sand, hat tilted jauntily to the side, jacket carelessly thrown over one shoulder, socks stuffed into his shoes, and his pant legs rolled up to just below his knee. He had only spared her a mischievous glance as a grin slanted over his lips when he picked her up and made a break for the waves. She had shrieked and tried to escape the welcoming warm prison of his arms before he plunged them both into the freezing surf. 

After they had emerged, he wrapped her in the jacket he had left on the sand and they walked and talked about the things that could not fit between the words they had written on paper. He had told her of the beautiful skies he had seen from between the trench walls, the shimmering people he had met, and all that they had taught him about living. He told her of the best meal he had ever tasted in his long life. Fish and chips. Cod caught fresh from the harbor and fried on the dock with the potatoes that had been pulled from the earth that morning. It had been shared between the surviving members from his unit, sitting on rocks next to the gangway to the ship that would take them back to New York. He told her of the sunrise he saw that morning and how it reminded him of the way she looked at him when he had said something stupid. 

She had rolled her eyes when he said that, holding back a smile. He had only pointed at his face and said,  _ There! Just like that! Warm and full of promise! That’s how the Sun looked at me this morning, and how my sun is looking at me now.  _

She didn’t hold back her smile after that. It had been so long since she had smiled. A century since. To the day. 

It was tradition to only spend the day together. A full twenty-four hours every century. She couldn’t remember why exactly they had decided to only meet every hundred years. But they had been doing it for so long, it was hard to break that particular habit. She knew that she had to keep with the agreement because she would turn into an addict with him. She would become addicted to his hands, his smile, his laugh, his absolute wonder at everything around him. And she knew she would not be able to quit him. And she was afraid. Afraid of the crash after the high. Afraid that after it might be more than a hundred years before she would be able to see him again. And micro-dosing was better than nothing at all. 

He said goodbye the same way he had every time they met,  _ Same time? Same place? 99 years? _

She would always respond the same way,  _ No, I’ve had enough of you for a century.  _

He would always grin and start walking away,  _ A hundred years then! Make sure you’re not late! _

Then like every time, she started counting down the hours until the next time she would see him. Even for an immortal, the years took too long and she was too impatient. 

875,999 hours. 

The next hundred years were not kind to her. She had seen atrocities committed and ignored. She had heard lies spread like poisoned honey through microphones. She had escaped to the farthest reaches of the world to find a place where she couldn’t find humanity and humanity couldn’t find her. But without fail, they would find her again, their voices anxious to tell about the worst things that had been done since she had hidden away. 

That cycle continued for years. Hide, be found, learn the worst, and hide again. When the countdown had reached 183,960 hours she decided that she had done enough hiding. She had gone out, the bitterness of seeing centuries worth of hate bitter on her tongue. Everywhere she looked had only shown her darkness that scrubbed her skin like a metal brush. The miles she traveled felt like inches crawling on broken glass. She had stopped replying to the letters that had turned into emails thousands of hours ago, his stunning effervescence hurt her eyes but she still read every message he sent to her. The only reason she stopped writing back was because she didn’t want to be one of the thunderheads that endlessly hovered behind his eyes. She thought her own rainstorms were contagious and she could not bring the same raw dark she felt to him. 

The last hundred hours till their new century passed as slowly as the previous 875,000. This year, the day was as cold as it was last time. But there had not been a cloud in the sky, the sun blinded her whenever she walked past a bank of windows and flashed off windshields as cars sped to their destinations. She had received an email that morning from him, tentative, desperate,  _ Same time? Same place? _ She hadn’t even locked her phone before the next email arrived, more firm and demanding, yet still searching,  _ Please.  _ They had known each other for centuries. The period at the end of the word spoke of heart-stopping, handshaking, throat-catching worry. And suddenly, she was clenched by an immense, unsurvivable tsunami of guilt. She chose to count their time apart as hours, but he still counted them as years. It had been decades since he had heard from her. It was easy to lose count of the years when she was focused on the soul-breaking hours that made those years. With her fingers trembling, she tapped four impossibly easy keys:  _ Yes.  _

Like every century, she was on time. The sun was beginning to set, but it was still just as vibrant as it had been that morning and she was still blinking sunspots out of her eyes as she went to pull her boots and socks off before she stepped onto the sand. But, between the burnt blackness in her vision, she saw a familiar silhouette sitting on the sand, facing the sea. 

He had been early. He thought she wouldn’t come. He didn’t want to miss her. She was suddenly choking on her heart. It had jumped behind her adam's apple, and her stomach had taken its place behind her ribs. She took a breath with the hope that it would force her heart and stomach back to where they belonged, and reached for the laces on her boots. 

The sand was just as cold as she remembered, and it helped shock her senses again like cardioversion for her nervous system. The space between them grew and shrunk exponentially with every step she took towards him. She didn’t know what she would say to him, what she could say to him. It had been decades, and he had written hundreds of thousands hours worth of words and she had only written one. She had been like a deep-sea creature, lost in the darkest parts of the ocean, pressure squeezing her and blinded by his light, but still mesmerized and drawn to him. 

Instantly, and in an eternity, she reached him. Her legs sank into the sand next to him and there they sat, the silence broken by the roaring waves. He was waiting for her to speak, to explain the quiet between them, and she was waiting for the correct words. He had patience, hard-earned over the years, and they both had time on their side. Time that was tracked by the sun disappearing into the next day, and the tide advancing up the beach. 

The ocean was almost to the territory their feet had claimed when she opened her mouth. Explaining the darkness within her to the darkness the sun left behind. Her words created a cloud over them, and she blamed the velvet cumulonimbus for the rain wetting her cheeks. When she finished talking about her pitch-black hours, she chanced a look at him from the corner of her eye, scared to be blinded, but she saw the cloud was responsible for the wet on his face as well. 

She reached through the years, and silence, and space between them and wiped the damp away from his face, hoping to shoo away the shadows she had added to his collection. 

He stopped her, though. His warm palm trapped her palm to his cheek,  _ Well, aren’t you a little ray of pitch-black? _

She choked as a laugh and a sob fought their way up her throat, but her heart was still there blocking the way. 

Then he told her of his last hundred years. He spoke softly, his voice caressing the thunderhead over them. Smoothing its edges and quieting the rain. His stories of the beauty he had seen swept over her skin like the softest dawn after a night full of lightning and thunder. 

He told her next of all the things he had tasted, new flavors still after hundreds of thousands of years of living, and the dawn brightened to early morning rays that promised warm coffee and sleepy smiles half-hidden by clean sheets. 

His laughs were echoed by the waves when he described the unbelievable situations he had gotten into with new friends that had echoes of ones he had lost years ago, and she felt the comforting heat of a shaft of sunlight that flowed through trees and tasted like sandwiches and lemonade and sounded like children laughing in a park. 

She felt his wonder as he described all the new games and inventions he had seen and been taught, the championships won and lost. And her skin felt the slight burn of over-exposure to UVs and the tight dryness of chlorine and a long day spent splashing in the water. 

His voice softened when he told her of the wild adventures he had read and seen and gone on himself. The low timbre of his voice rasped like long grass that blocked out everything but the sky, the setting sun, and the stories of future plans between friends. 

He had never been much of a singer, but his wonder and enthusiasm supported him when he was too flat or too sharp as he sang the notes of songs that had stolen his heart. She felt the refreshing bath of stars and moonlight as she breathed in a campfire where songs and stories were alternated. 

Finally, his last hundred years had been laid bare to her. The storm cloud was gone but the rain had persisted. Leaving tracks down her cheeks, partially from sadness, but mostly from joy. Because, yes she was sad that she had missed 875,999 hours of beauty, but she was still able to experience it. To hear of it. 

It was his turn to reach through the years, and memories, and words to wipe the rain from her face. And it was her turn to trap his hand against her cheek. And she smiled, face sore from the strange movement, but muscle memory is a powerful thing. Almost as powerful as addiction. And in an instant, she thought she could handle this addiction. The one sitting next to her. The aged, immortal soul trapped in a young body. She could survive the crash if it ever did happen. He was a habit that no matter what happened, a hundred years could pass and they would still find each other. Silence, space, or time could not stop them from meeting on this cold strip of beach facing the ocean. 

He flipped his hand around and threaded her fingers through his own and pulled her up and over his shoulder and took off into the waves. She shrieked and laughed and gasped. He grinned, laughed, and never took his eyes off her like he was afraid she would disappear before his eyes and get pulled out again to the dark, pressurized ocean floor. 

She decided that while the dark would be there, he could help her find the light, but she didn’t want to wait another 875,999 hours to feel warm again. 

So when he asked,  _ Same time? Same place? 99 years? _

She shook her head and responded,  _ No. I haven’t had enough of you yet.  _

He only grinned, lifted her in his arms, and spun and spun till they were both dizzy. When their lips met, she started counting the hours again. Deciding to go up this time instead of down. 

One hour. 


End file.
